Jack Shaw looked small when he was led into a federal courtroom last Thursday to be charged with conspiracy to commit extortion.

And now he's dead.

Shaw trailed in at the end of a line of a dozen fellow defendants, virtually all of them bigger than he was. A federal marshal told him to sit in a corner juror's seat and Shaw sat, slumped, his pinched, pale face barely visible.

Matt Rainey/The Star-LedgerJersey City political operative Jack Shaw on July 23 after being arrested in the FBI's sweeping corruption and money laundering probe.

Some say he was a big player in politics. A political consultant who handled the campaigns of the first Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli, and Gov. Jim Florio. A go-to guy who represented George Filopoulos, a big developer in Jersey City who is turning the city's old medical center into a massive condo complex.

He did serve as U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg's state director for a year. But if Shaw was a big player, he stayed in the shadows and didn't leave a big footprint.

Others say he was just a guy past his prime, hustling for work, campaign by campaign, with no great skill beyond knowing the telephone numbers of a lot of people.

"He was always around, but I don't know how big he was," says Rudy Garcia, a former Union City mayor and state assemblyman. "Lots of guys are like him."

Florio called him "a pleasant fellow" who understood "the shifting political alliances" in Hudson County but who was hardly crucial to the Governor's success.

George Cahn, a spokesman for Filopoulos, says he didn't think the "relationship" between his boss and Shaw was "very extensive."

"I thought he died years ago," said Jamie Fox, once Torricelli's chief of staff who said Shaw did not have a big role in his campaign.

Who can tell? No one wants to be associated with people big in Hudson politics right now. Not even people big in Hudson politics.

Besides, nothing like hand and leg shackles to make big guys suddenly look real small. Even death can't change that.

When Shaw was busted for extortion, no one came to a courtroom filled with other anxious friends and relatives of the accused to see what happened to him. Shaw had to rely on the federal public defender to get him out on $100,000 bond. Didn't have a lawyer of his own. He looked puzzled and, maybe, a little frightened when it came his time to tell the judge he understood the charges against him.

And, when he died, he died alone.

Edward DeFazio, the Hudson County prosecutor, says he doesn't yet know how Shaw died, although some investigators say they saw open pill bottles near his body and that makes it look like suicide.

A community activist and sometime politician, Antonio Torres, was mystified when he heard all this. Shaw wasn't the sort to kill himself, says Torres, who hired Shaw to run an unsuccessful campaign for city council nearly a decade ago.

"He had a real bad heart and took a lot of medication, I know that,'' says Torres.

Although DeFazio said his body was discovered by a girlfriend, many people say that Shaw was a loner. Came to fund-raisers alone. Came to the endless number of ethnic festivals in Jersey City alone. A guy known for knowing people is known for being alone.

There had been exceptions. He and a guy named Eddie Pulver were close friends. When Shaw arrived from Chicago, where he was raised, he went to work for the Hudson County Central Labor Council. Pulver, head of the Seamen's International Union (SIU), was big in that and ran it for a few years before he died in 2002.

"That's really where Jack got his start in Jersey City," said Eliu Rivera, a Hudson freeholder. "He was a labor organizer, natural to get into politics from there."

If the feds and their charges are to be believed, Shaw got tight with another guy in recent months. A developer -- or, at least, someone who said he was a developer. His name was Solomon Dwek, and he was an FBI informant trying to get out of trouble of his own by pretending to be someone willing to bribe public officials.

The charges released by the prosecutor last week described meeting after meeting between Dwek and Shaw this spring. Other affidavits place an unnamed "consultant" -- undoubtedly Shaw -- at other meetings at which Dwek sought to bribe other public officials. The feds have the kind of quotes that had to come from a wire.

Those who knew Shaw say he didn't seem the type to take bribes. "He was strict about complying with the law," says Torres. Rivera agrees - "Seemed an honest guy."

What Florio most recalls about him has nothing to do with politics. He says Shaw and Pulver had a soft spot for pets. They were active with the Hudson County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. That's how they got to be good friends.